ecoculture, geophilosophy, mediapolitics

“Beatnik Brothers” in Parrhesia

The new issue of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy includes work by Quentin Meillassoux, Tristan Garcia, a review panel discussing Katrin Pahl’s Tropes of Transport: Hegel and Emotion, and a piece by me on the objects-processes debate in speculative realist philosophy.

The latter, entitled “Beatnik Brothers? Between Graham Harman and the Deleuzo-Whiteheadian Axis,” is an updated version of the talk I gave at the 2012 Nonhuman Turn conference at the University of Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies.

Graham Harman has kindly posted what I take to be a preliminary response to the idea of my article here. He admits he has not read the article yet, so I look forward to a response to the arguments made in the article itself, and/or to the article he mentions, which provides a more fully fleshed out response to the general idea.

Could be BEATIFIC BROTHERS vs BEATNIK BROTHERS? “(1: of, possessing, or imparting beatitude; 2: having a blissful or benign appearance)…” As the sportscaster chugs from his World Cup – what’s not to like?

Tristan Garcia’s “Another Order of Time” helpfully situates Harman amongst the teams he is secretly rooting for: “Two grand theses are themselves progressively freed [withdrawn?] from these debates: on the one hand ‘presentism’, defended today by Markosian, Zimmermann, and Merricks; and on the other hand ‘eternalism’ (or sometimes ‘quadridimensionalism’), which is advocated by [Willard VO] Quine in WORD AND OBJECT or by [David] Lewis in ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS”. Garcia suggests problems with the Third Way of ‘Growing Block Universe Theory’ (GBUT) – after Michael Tooley’s TIME, TENSE, AND CAUSATION.

But, I’m not sure that Garcia’s team has the winning formula: “The confusion is surely born from the fact that one accords to the idea of presence a discrete, rather than continuous, character: either one is present, or one is not. One is not more or less present”. So, Garcia concludes, “presence accumulates”. Reality is confirmed as a Ponzi Scheme!

Garcia frets: “all the past would be drawn into and immediately contained in the present. This is the risk of any dialectical thought of time as process and Aufhebung”. Horrors! (the Pessimist cries : ) Where is My Will and Representation in such a chaotic processual stream?!

Thanks for the link and forum, Adrian.
Best, Mark (re-contemplating childhood while grandchild grows within – but has not yet howling in the next room ; )